With the advent of an ever increasing number of sources of media, many modern electronic media receivers are capable of tuning media from such multiple sources. For example, some newer televisions and television set-top boxes are capable of receiving terrestrial broadcast, cable and satellite video and audio in multiple formats. Such formats may include broadcast National Television Systems Committee (NTSC) and Phase Alternating Line (PAL) television signals, radio signals, newer high definition Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), Digital Video Broadcasting-Satellite (DVB-S), Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial (DVB-T), Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting (ISDB) television signals, quadrature amplitude modulated (QAM) digital cable signals, and the like.
Many of today's receivers typically include multiple tuners. Each tuner is configured to receive one or more signal types that the receiver is capable of receiving or tuning. The variety of signal types, formats, sources, interconnects, and so on, can be problematic for users who need to configure one or more tuners with respect to their current television (TV) signal source (e.g., cable service, direct broadcast satellite).
Personal computer (PC) users may add tuners, remove tuners, switch tuners, or move tuners to different slots within PCs. Thus, for PCs and other devices that may have a variety of different tuner configurations, the signal/tuner setup experience in these devices can be very complicated for the average PC user. Typical setup questions that may be difficult for an average user to answer during a signal/tuner setup procedure might include, for example, what broadcast standard should be selected (e.g., NTSC, PAL, SECAM, DVB, ATSC), how many tuners should be configured for the selected broadcast standard, what connector type is the TV signal connected to (e.g., RF, Composite Video, S-Video, Component), and how the TV signal is being provided (e.g., an antenna, cable provider, set-top box).
The tuner configuration is not reported until all the tuners have been scanned. This can take a while if the user has, for example, multiple hybrid tuner cards (e.g., a tuner card that may receive a signal through multiple standards) since the program needs to scan every tuner the tuner device supports.